On Moderate Republicans

Mr. A: There are a tiny number of historically traditional Dimocraps left (definitely not left). Now there are, only neo-lib and neo-con fascists and fascists don’t need no damn educations!!! Fascists need big military machines and high tech weaponry, in the hands of emotionally abused high school grads. These soldiers only need 40k per year, decent benefits and amphetamines and statutory permission to maim and kill.Me: Catchy, Mr “A”, catchy. In support consider that before he finally retired Arlen Specter of Penn. (once as anti-a-democrat as could be) not only appealed to the DNC for acceptance he was fully embraced by them.Mr. A: Arlen Specter was a decent moderate, that got chewed up and spit out by the neo-machine.Me: At what point did Specter become a moderate? After the Neo-conservatives took over the right wing of the party?Mr. A: Bout then — compared to those around him — he always worked at being bi-partisan and he was considered to be a moderate Repugnican by fellow legislators.Me: The Democrats with whom he worked thus allowing him to be considered “bi-partisan” were by that time looking almost identical to the so-called “moderate Republicans of just one generation earlier. This would seem to indicate that the political spectrum had already shifted so far rightward that this shift allowed formerly “high reactionaries” like Specter to be viewed as moderates.Mr. A: True enough but I witnessed Specter during committee proceeding exhibit reason and moderation but you are right: in the world I was born in Specter’s political sensibilities fall right around Goldwater, or in some telling respects, Hillary Clinton —-Me: Excellent insight, Mr. A, not many I deal with ever arrive at that understanding. They are so caught up in the false dichotomy of Democrat vs. Republican that I sometimes wonder if they can see the nose on their faces. And I’m not sure exactly how much hyperbole is involved in this statement.

My final reply is as follows if Mr. A will forgive my presumption to use this conversation for this purpose.

So true. Isn’t truly telling that the political sensibilities of Barry Goldwater mesh with those of Hillary Clinton? That seems almost incongruous, doesn’t it? But, that is just how far the Democratic Party has shifted politically rightward in abandoning the American working class, and (for those interested) the American Middle Class. The Democratic Party of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s are so far right on the total political spectrum that they make Richard Nixon the last LIBERAL President the US of A has had.

And nearly all my Democratic friends sit around shaking their collective heads wondering how a Trump presidency could have ever even been possible.

This is so much so that I can’t even blame the people who voted for Mr. T for what he is doing. It is the New Democrats of the “Democratic Leadership Council” (which by the way was funded by the Koch Brothers: that’s right, those Koch Brothers, Charles and David Koch) who brought Bill Clinton to the fore in the early 1990s who I blame and, that’s right, all the Democrats of that and surrounding decades who SOLD OUT the America I grew up in. Those Democrats who because they hated African Americans enough they were willing to turn the FDR New Deal Democratic Party into the Al Smith Democratic Party and abandoned the “Solid South” into Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” Al Smith, who would have been right at home in Reagan’s White House, was a “fiscal conservative” who would have continued the same economic policies as Harding, Coolidge and Hoover which had brought the US and the entire world to its knees and set the stage for the ultra nationalistic fascist dictatorships that a decade later virtually destroyed the entire world in their global conflagration of territorial conquest, national and racial genocide.

Now imagine this: Bill did the bidding of his Koch masters (I’m not real sure that the pun is not intended) and repealed the last vestiges of the Banking Act of 1933, aka, The Glass-Steagall Act which had protected the average American from the worst excesses of Wall Street abuses and within 10 years guess what happened? yet again?

Yes, a global financial crisis and guess what is accompanying this glorious feat, yet again? I have a feeling you know at least the rudiments of this.

Golden Dawn (Greek Nazis, not Neo nazis, but actual nazis as they openly use Nazi insignia, salutes etc.) secured 7% of the vote in the September 2015 election, and it now has 18 MPs, making it the third biggest force in Greek politics. BTW, there is an interesting history with Nazi/fascist rule in post war Greece, for instance the first battle of the “Cold War” was in Athens 1944 not Berlin with the active support Great Britain and Winston Churchill.

Far-right party ELAM entered parliament for the first time in May 2016 elections, securing two seats from voters stung by the island’s acute financial crisis in 2013. Affiliated to Golden Dawn,

Marine Le Pen’s National Front, The FN has two seats in the French National Assembly (parliament) and in 2014 won the French European Parliament election, taking 25% of the vote.

VMRO-DPMNE (Macedonia)

Freedom Party-FPOe Party (Austria)

Danish People’s Party, Its 21% of the vote was a record for the party, and now the ruling coalition depends on DPP support in parliament.

the Finns Party (previously the “True Finns”)

the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party

Far-right Jobbik is the third strongest party in Hungary

The ultra-nationalist People’s Party-Our Slovakia of Marian Kotleba entered parliament for the first time this year, winning 14 seats. Mr Kotleba has previously dressed in a uniform modelled on the Hlinka Guard, the militia of the 1939-45 Nazi-sponsored Slovak State.

The nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD) have challenged the traditional dominance of Sweden’s Social Democrats, a party associated with generous social welfare and tolerance of minorities.

In 2014 the SD became the third-largest party, winning 13% in the general election. But they are shunned by other parties in parliament.

This of course does not mention the Neo-nazis of the Ukraine or the Nationalists of Nigel Farage’s National Front in the UK.

Nor have I mentioned the personality of the day Donald John Trump.

Nearly all of which parties have surged in popularity since the crisis of 2007/8 which hit Europe more like 2010.

Now none of this requires a financial crisis to occur but it nearly always seems to be preceded by one unless the economic crisis follows the coup t’etat of a fascist dictatorship like what followed Iran after the CIA coup in 1953, the CIA’s Guatemalan coup in 1954, the CIA orchestrated Chilean coup on “9/11” 1973 or in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, etc, etc.

One might argue that the US economic policy of financialization began under Mr. Reagan, or Mr. Carter or even under Mr. Nixon when he took the US off the Gold Standard Aug. 13 1971, but there can be no doubt that the seeds of the current crisis were if not sown under Bill Clinton they certainly were watered and richly fertilized under his Wall Street tutelage.